


Who Fell Among the Thieves

by Elizabeth Culmer (edenfalling)



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Aftermath, Anger, Backstory, Competency, Fifteen Minute Fic, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Guns, Pre-Movie(s), Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-11
Updated: 2012-02-11
Packaged: 2018-01-20 23:14:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1529333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/edenfalling/pseuds/Elizabeth%20Culmer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur didn't help Dom run from California, but he couldn't let him drown on his own.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Fell Among the Thieves

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by the 2/10/12 [15_minute_fic](http://15_minute_fic.livejournal.com) word #219.
> 
> (I am completely and utterly faking any talk about guns, btw. It is all cribbed from [chn_breathmint](http://chn_breathmint.livejournal.com)'s useful and excellent [gun tutorial post in four parts](http://chn-breathmint.livejournal.com/482045.html).)

It took Arthur all of two days to find Dom. Granted, he had the benefit of knowing Dom's general cast of mind and all the details of his honeymoon -- and to think that just a week before, he'd been sure there would never be an upside to Mal's love of oversharing -- but even so, Dom was doing a lousy job of hiding.

He'd never bothered to learn those skills, not when he and Mal kept one foot in legitimate academic life and only dabbled in the lighter shallows of illegal extraction. Idiot.

Arthur broke into Dom's Paris hotel room and sat in a plush armchair beside the bed, his Glock across his lap, waiting for Dom to notice him and wake.

Three hours later he gave up expecting any sense of danger to work its way through his friend and sometimes employer's sleeping mind. Arthur rose from the chair, stretched to ease the kinks in his shoulders and knees, and walked the three steps to the bedside where he could loom over Dom. Keeping his finger carefully away from the trigger, he lowered the gun until the muzzle kissed Dom's forehead, which wrinkled in somnolent distress.

"Wake up."

Dom's blue eyes blinked once, twice, and then snapped open. He flailed -- Arthur stepped neatly away from his lashing arm -- and swallowed. "What-- Arthur-- this is-- how did-- I swear I didn't-- who sent--"

"Shut up," Arthur told him, pressing his gun a bit harder into Dom's skin. "Don't move."

"I didn't kill her!" Dom said, his voice breaking nearly into a shout.

"I know," Arthur said. "Shut up anyway. For once in your life, you're going to listen to me outside a job, because you sure as fuck don't have any high ground left to tell yourself you're doing a better job managing your life."

Dom opened his mouth. Arthur's finger twitched toward the trigger. "Glocks don't have safeties," he reminded his friend. "Don't push me." He had to fight harder than he'd expected to keep his voice calm. He'd known he was angry -- at Dom, at Mal, at the universe in general -- but the depth of that fury kept surprising him when it broke through his iron shroud of focus. 

Dom subsided, protest unspoken.

"Good. Let me list your faults. Point one, when somebody is suffering from a clearly dream-induced instability, you don't try to fix it yourself. You call in people who aren't so close to the problem that they miss the forest for the trees. Point two, when someone kills him or herself in what is _obviously_ a frame job, you stick it out and insist on a fair trial. You do not run. Running is only going to make you look guilty and excite the law into chasing you. It is also fucking cowardly to abandon your children. Point three, if you absolutely have to run, you don't use your middle name and your dead wife's maiden name as an alias, and you definitely don't stay in the same fucking hotel where you had your honeymoon. And point four, when you're a wreck because you fucked up points one to three, you _call me_ , asshole!"

Arthur dug the tip of his gun into Dom's skin one more time, twisting slightly to drive home his lecture. Then he stepped back, slid the pistol into his waistband holster, and let Dom have a moment to breathe.

"I'm sorry," Dom said, still lying flat on his back as if the weight of the air were too much for him to carry.

"You should be," Arthur agreed. Then he grabbed Dom's shoulder and hauled him upright. "But sorry won't clear your name or get you home. Pull yourself together and check out of this place before somebody else tracks you the same way I did. Then we'll start figuring out how to fix this mess. You owe that to Mal."

Dom winced, but he let Arthur shove him toward the bathroom without protest.

Arthur sighed as the door closed and he heard the shower turn on. "The things I do for you, Mal," he murmured to the hungry silence of the empty room. Then he started folding the hopeless muddle of Dom's discarded clothing and packing it neatly into the open suitcase by the door.

He could grieve later.


End file.
